The cab tax

We're rationing the thing we love and overspending on the thing we tolerate – and nobody's adding it up.

Britain is budgeting the car to within an inch of its life and tapping Uber three times a week without blinking. 32% of regular cab users feel bad about how much they spend, then they book another one anyway. Something doesn't add up.

Justifications to click for a cab sound rational: the weather, running late, bags to carry, safety at night. They just turn up suspiciously often when a cab is the easier option. It looks like rain. It's only an extra £6. Safer when it's dark. All true at some point, but justified on a mild day at 5pm.

Here's what's really happening. The car is king. It gives us something we desperately need right now: control over our own day. Spontaneity, flexibility, privacy, the feeling of being in charge. Yet that becomes a privilege fewer can afford, so the cab steps in as the substitute of least compromise. Door to door, no timetable, no crowds. It's the closest thing to the feeling of driving yourself, without the visible running total.

And that's the magic of Uber, and the kryptonite of our own vehicles. The car has a total. You see it build across MOTs, insurance renewals, monthly fuel. Mental accounting is easy, climbing and stinging. Pain gets remembered. It's an obvious room to cut. We could access the cab total, but we choose not to, less pain of payment in the moment. Each ride is its own little emergency, with its own little justification. We don't count costs in emergencies.

"The cab's total is scattered in apps and card taps that struggle for space in our memory bank."

The contradiction is hiding in plain sight. We're putting the brakes on our cars, the security blanket that scores higher on control, reliability, safety, cost and predictability, and pouring money into the one that scores lower on all of them. Because the car's total is visible. The cab's total is scattered in apps and card taps that struggle for space in our memory bank.

We're renting the illusion of control, one £7.96 tap at a time.